Former Thesis Students

Research Interests:  

Vanessa is interested in how wildlife will acclimate to their local environments as climates around the world continue to change. Vanessa’s work centers on measuring the thermal preferences of several reptile species, as well as the sprint speed capabilities of Podarcis erhardii under altered thermal conditions. 

Research Interests: 

Larson is interested in Infectious disease epidemiology, malaria, African disease ecology. 

Research Interests:  

Hayden is a doctoral student interested in the ecological and genetic mechanisms influencing the spillover of antibiotic resistant bacteria from poultry to humans. Working at the intersection between disease ecology and epidemiology, he investigates how agricultural community practices affect the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in Ecuador.

Research Interests: 

Zachery's thesis research focuses on the effects of feral goat grazing on small island ecosystems and the potential benefits of goat removal. He is broadly interested in the impacts of invasive species on native species communities and works with the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum as a natural area steward. He has served as an instructor for both the undergraduate and graduate UM Restoration Ecology courses. 

Research Interests: 

Scott's thesis research focuses on the effects of over grazing on honey production in the Cycladic islands of Greece. I investigate how grazing affects the production of flowers as well as the composition of the floral communities. I also try to understand the economic ramifications of grazing for apiculture.  

Research Interests: 

Eric works on the impacts of exurban development on vertebrate wildlife combining a comparative approach with field survey work.

Research Interests: 

Johanna investigates the host-parasite interactions in island populations. In particular she examines which factors determine the presence of lizard malaria in island populations. 

Research Interests: 

Sarah is interested in the conservation of island vertebrates. Her graduate research examines how living in a predator-free environment shapes the running ability of island populations. 

Current: 

Ph.D. student at Univ. of California-Merced. 

Research Interests: 

Kinsey is an ecologist whose research interests lie at the interface of behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation biology. Her M.S. research with Dr. Foufopoulos is focused on understanding the mechanisms responsible for the retention of anti-predator behavior in island populations of the Aegean Wall Lizard (Podarcis erhardii).

Research Interests: 

Research interests center on the ecosystem services associated with different levels of grazing in Mediterranean ecosystems.

Current: 

Postdoctoral Researcher, Univ. of S. Florida.

Research Interests:

Stephanie is interested in the mechanisms through which organisms respond to variability and unpredictability in their environment and the trade-offs associated with such responses. Specifically, she is using an amphibian system to investigate the consequences of environmental drying (pond desiccation) on the newly formed adult immune system.

Research Interests: 

Erin's research interests include human-wildlife conflict, conservation ecology, habitat fragmentation, and political ecology. Specifically, she is interested in the intersection between human livelihoods and wildlife conservation efforts. Her Masters research investigates how livestock grazing practices in the Mediterranean influence vertebrate populations.

Current: 

Conservation ecologist, San Diego Zoo Global. 

Research Interests: 

David is interested in the conservation of African vertebrates,especially in the interactions between ungulate grazers and livestock. Thesis work focused on the competitive interactions between giraffes and camels in the East African savanna.  

Current: 

Michigan State University, Dual Ph.D program in Zoology and Ecology, Evolution, Biology and Behavior. Topic: Associations of social environment and epigenetic mechanisms underlying individual variation in stress reactivity among spotted hyenas.

Research Interests: 

Zach's research interests include wildlife physiology and epigenetics.

Current: Ph.D. candidate in EEB, University of Michigan.

Research Interests: 

Anat's thesis research focused on the thermal ecology in the Aegean Wall Lizard (Podarcis erhardii). She compared thermoregulation, thermal preferences, critical thermal tolerances, and water loss rates across land-bridge island populations of P. erhardii that either varied in population genetic diversity (based on the idea that small islet populations become genetically impoverished over time) or in habitat thermal quality (sampling from the same, large, genetically diverse population, across microhabitat types). Her results suggest that environment appears to matter more than genetic diversity. For her Ph.D., she studied interactions between habitat fragmentation and susceptibility of amphibians to chytridiomycosis.

Current: 

Ph.D. candidate at Duke University. 

Research Interests: 

Binbin conducted her research on the way feral cats affect the behavior of resident wildlife in the Mediterranean. Her work focused on the escape behaviors of endemic island lizards which displayed remarkable variance and flexibility.

Research Interests: 

Katherine's research interests include disease ecology and parasitology, the ecology of tropical Latin American agroecosystems, conservation research and implementation, and human-wildlife conflicts. She completed her thesis field work on coffee plantations of Chiapas, Mexico investigating the effects of agricultural management practices on the ectoparasite load of bird populations.

Current: 

Researcher, Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington. 

Research Interests: 

Effects of avian malaria and food supplementation on wild birds. Impacts of global climate change on natural ecosystems. 

Current: 

Postdoctoral Researcher, Cornell U. 

Research Interests: 

Dissertation investigated how mite pockets evolved across different lizard groups. 

Research Interests: 

Forest fragmentation and its effects on avian physiology and health

Current: 

Assist. Professor, Institute of Ecology, Univ. of Georgia.

Research Interests: 

Courtney is interested in studying the drivers of emerging infectious diseases. Her dissertation investigated how food resources impact stress levels, immune function, blood parasite loads, and seasonal reproductive success in a breeding population of White-crowned Sparrows in the Rocky Mountains. She also developed a single host/ single vector/single blood parasite deterministic, compartmental model examining how host condition impacts transmission dynamics to complement my past field experiment. This can eventually be expanded to the more realistic, multihost / multiparasite system.

Current: 

Ph.D student, Oregon State University.

Research Interests: 

Aimee's research combines wildlife ecology and conservation biology to better understand the impacts of environmental disturbance. While part of the Foufopoulos lab,she worked in central Kenya where she was involved in two projects that investigated the impacts of land-use change and human-wildlife conflict on animal communities. One of these projects, her master's dissertation, used long-term observation data to look at the impacts of an electric fence on the populations and diversity of the mammal community inside a biodiverse protected area. The second project was an Integrated Assessment that utilized methods from disease ecology to look at the role of Q Fever in human-wildlife-livestock relations. Presently, she is interested in continuing along these themes of research and applying methods of wildlife ecology to better understand the impacts of disturbance and to guide conservation efforts.

Current: 

NSF Postdoctoral Researcher, Harvard University.

Research Interests: 

Colin is interested in understanding human effects on ecological communities. His research is based in the Greek islands, a landscape with a long history of human land use, and focuses on a characteristic trophic motif centering around the Aegean Wall lizard Podarcis erhardii. Colin is hypothesizing that, due to anthropogenic influences including goat grazing, which destroys lizard habitat, wall building, which creates refugia, and exotic species introductions, which add competitors and predators to islands, P. erhardii will adapt its behavior with potentially measurable differences in morphology and physiology. He also suspects that changes in behavior, morphology or physiology could have cascading density- and trait-mediated effects on the rest of the ecological community. For his dissertation, Colin is creating large-scale manipulative experiments in the Cyclades to test the effects of human land use on this lizard, and the extent to which those effects translate to changes in the system as a whole. He graduated from the Foufopoulos Lab in 2009 and finished his PhD at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Website:http://schmitz.environment.yale.edu

Current: 

Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Geography, Penn State University. 

Research Interests: 

Human wildlife livestock interactions in East Africa. Wildlife diseases as a risk to livestock. 

Current: 

Senior Associate, Industrial Economics, Boston.

Research Interests: 

Changes in global climate on the distribution of wildlife. Assessment of physical and chemical stressors on natural resources. 

Current: 

Ecologist, Research Dept., Wilderness Society.

Research Interests: 

Matt's dissertation focused on the effects of roads on wildlife. Other interests include ornithology and ecophysiology. 

Caitlin Weber
Masters Thesis Student
cqw@umich.edu

Currently: 

Program manager, Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Utah.

 
Research Interests:

Caitlin's research interests include ecosystem management and restoration. For my thesis I am looking at the ecosystem impacts of invasive rats in 15 study islands in the Aegean. She does this by comparing islands on which rats were eradicated with nearby islands that retain rat populations.

Research Interests: 

Vincent's research interests are in herpetofaunal ecology and conservation. I am most interested in the ecological impacts of invasive species and the effects of global climate change on reptiles. His research focuses on the ways in which habitat fragmentation affects the thermal biology of fragmented lizard populations. 

Research Interests: 

Research thesis focused on lost ecosystems services and in particular on pollination services and control of pests by invertebrate predators in Mediterranean ecosystems.